41 Facts About Hephaestion

Hephaestion, son of Amyntor, was an ancient Macedonian nobleman and a general in the army of Alexander the Great.

The only surviving anecdote from Hephaestion's youth comes courtesy of the Alexander Romance.

Hephaestion has never been named among those who attended the lectures at Mieza, but his close friendship with Alexander at that age suggests strongly that he was numbered among them.

Hephaestion was a contemporary of Alexander and it is likely that his influence might have been seen as less of a threat than these more mature companions.

Whatever Hephaestion's opinion had been on the whole affair, like many of Alexander's other childhood companions he was not exiled in its aftermath.

Hephaestion's name is not mentioned in lists of high-ranking officers during the early battles of Alexander's Danube campaign or the invasion of Persia.

Hephaestion took local advice and chose a man distantly related to the royal family, but whose honesty had reduced him to working as a gardener.

Hephaestion's task was not an easy one for this was not the Athenian fleet with which Alexander had started and had earlier disbanded, but a motley collection of semi-reluctant allies of many nationalities who would need holding together with patience and strength.

Plutarch, while writing about Alexander's correspondence, reveals an occasion when Hephaestion was away on business and Alexander wrote to him.

Hephaestion was certainly in the thick of things with Alexander for Arrian tells us he was wounded and Curtius specifically mentions that it was a spear wound in the arm.

That he chose Hephaestion to help him shows that he could rely on Hephaestion's tact and sympathy.

Hephaestion commanded one of the columns and, after arriving at Marakanda, he set out again to establish settlements in the region.

Hephaestion led his section north into the Swat Valley, while Hephaestion and Perdiccas took a sizeable contingent through the Khyber Pass.

Hephaestion reached the Indus with the land behind him conquered, including the successful siege of Peuceolatis, which took thirty days, and proceeded to organize the construction of boats for the crossing.

Hephaestion took part in a notable cavalry charge at the battle of the Hydaspes river.

Hephaestion crossed the Gedrosian desert with Alexander, sharing the torments of that journey and, when the army was safely back in Susa, he was decorated for bravery.

Hephaestion was to take part in no further fighting; he had only months to live.

Photius mentions Perdiccas being appointed "to command the chiliarchy which Hephaestion had originally held".

Diodorus, Arrian and Curtius all describe the scene when Alexander and Hephaestion went together to visit the captured Persian royal family.

Hephaestion, when replying to a letter to Alexander's mother, Olympias, said "you know that Alexander means more to us than anything".

Arrian says that Alexander, after Hephaestion's death, described him as "the friend I valued as my own life".

Time after time, when Alexander needed to divide his forces he entrusted half to Hephaestion, knowing that in him he had a man of unquestionable loyalty who understood and sympathized with his aims and, above all, who got the job done.

Hephaestion played a full part in Alexander's regular consultations with senior officers, but he was the one to whom Alexander would talk in private, sharing his thoughts, hopes, and plans.

Curtius states that Hephaestion was the sharer of all his secrets; and Plutarch describes an occasion when Alexander had a controversial change to impose and implies that Hephaestion was the one with whom Alexander discussed it and who arranged for the change to be implemented.

Furthermore, Arrian and Plutarch describe the occasion when Alexander and Hephaestion publicly identified themselves with the Homeric figures of Achilles and Patroclus.

Hephaestion encircled the tomb of Achilles with a garland and Hephaestion did the same with the tomb of Patroclus, and they ran a race, naked, to honour their dead heroes.

Yet given the factions and jealousies that arise in any court and that Hephaestion was supremely close to the greatest monarch the Western world had yet seen, it is remarkable how little enmity he inspired.

In only one instance is Hephaestion known to have quarrelled with a fellow officer and that was with Craterus.

Hephaestion gave perhaps the ultimate proof of this in the summer of 324 BC, when he accepted as his wife Drypetis, daughter of Darius and sister to Alexander's own second wife Stateira.

In spring 324 BC Hephaestion left Susa, where he had been married, and accompanied Alexander and the rest of the army as they travelled towards Ecbatana.

Arrian says that after the fever had run for seven days, Alexander had to be summoned from the games to Hephaestion, who was seriously ill.

Hephaestion did not arrive in time; by the time he got there, Hephaestion was dead.

Plutarch says that being a young man and a soldier, Hephaestion had ignored medical advice: As soon as his doctor, Glaucias, had gone off to the theatre, he ate a large breakfast, consisting of a boiled fowl and a cooler of wine, and then fell sick and died.

Piecing the accounts together, it seems as if Hephaestion's fever had run its course for seven days, after which time he was sufficiently recovered for his doctor, and Alexander himself, to feel it was safe to leave him, and for Hephaestion to feel hungry.

Hephaestion's meal seems to have caused a relapse that led to his rapid death.

The general Eumenes suggested that divine honors be given to Hephaestion; this was later done.

Hephaestion's death is dealt with at greater length by the ancient sources than any of the events of his life, because of its profound effect upon Alexander.

Plutarch says they were massacred as an offering to the spirit of Hephaestion, and it is quite possible to imagine that to Alexander this might have followed in spirit with Achilles' killing of "twelve high-born youths" beside Patroclus' funeral pyre.

Messengers were sent to the oracle at Siwa to ask if Amon would permit Hephaestion to be worshipped as a god.

Hephaestion employed Stasicrates, "as this artist was famous for his innovations, which combined an exceptional degree of magnificence, audacity and ostentation", to design the pyre for Hephaestion.

One final tribute remained, and it is compelling in its simplicity and in what it reveals about the high esteem in which Hephaestion was held by Alexander.